Top 581 Quotes & Sayings by Timothy Keller - Page 10

Big cities have a lot of 'younger brothers' who have left traditional parts of the world and their families for a more liberal lifestyle. But cities are filled to the gills with 'elder brothers' too.

Jesus was much more interested in the quality of the people's response to him than in the quantity of the crowd.

To be a Christian is a standing, a legal position. It means to be a child of God. You are or you are not, there is no try.

Prayer is both conversation and encounter with God.

We must neither confuse evangelism with doing justice, nor separate them from one another.

Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.

We are so evil and sinful and flawed that Jesus had to die for us... But we are so lobed and valued that he was willing to due for us.

One of the most frequent responses I get from non-Christian readers is: 'I'm not sure I agree with all this, but I must say this is the first book I've read by a Christian that didn't treat me like I was an idiot.'

God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we.

If you come from insignificance and when you die you return to insignificance, then nothing is significant now.

A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself

I wouldn't venture to say which kind of sin is more prevalent. I wouldn't even want to try to characterize certain 'circles.'

It is inaccurate to think the gospel is what saves non-Christians, and then Christians mature by trying hard to live according to biblical principles. It is more accurate to say that we are saved by believing the gospel, and then we are transformed in every part of our minds, hearts, and lives by believing the gospel more and more deeply as life goes on.

If we are not deliberately thinking about our culture and our context, we will be conformed to it without ever knowing.

To love our success more than God and our neighbor hardens the heart, making us less able to feel and to sense.

You won't be able to change the world, yourself, anything, if you don't change yourself inwardly, deeply, enduringly.

The product of a true, growing, gospel-centered nature is often gentleness.

If you don't love the poor, you don't know what God's done for you.

Christianity offers not merely a consolation but a restoration - not just of the life we had but of the life we always wanted but never achieved. And because the joy will be even greater for all that evil, this means the final defeat of all those forces that would have destroyed the purpose of God in creation, namely, to live with his people in glory and delight forever.

Bad evangelism says: I'm right, you're wrong, and I would love to tell you about it

Without immersion in God's words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality.

Without the gospel we hate ourselves instead of our sin.

The world can’t save itself. That’s the message of Christmas.

Remember that according to the Bible, the heart is not primarily the emotions but rather the seat of our fundamental commitments and trusts, and therefore it is the control center of the whole life. So to preach to the heart means to go right for the commanding commitments of people's lives that drive their desires, thinking, feeling, and action.

It is one thing to say that science is only equipped to test for natural causes and cannot speak to any others. It is quite another to insist that science proves that no other causes could possibly exist. . . . There would be no experimental model for testing the statement: 'No supernatural cause for any natural phenomenon is possible.' It is therefore a philosophical presupposition and not a scientific finding.

I am a Christian resident of New York City. I simply read things the other Manhattanites read (NY Times, New Yorker magazine, Wall Street Journal, and many of the books they read) plus all my Christian reading. I don't do anything special to understand skeptics. I also talk to a lot of skeptics and read things they point to.

The two things we all want so desperately — glory and relationship — can coexist only with God.

Christianity is not just for the strong; it's for everyone.

We are free to fight sin, and free to win; but we must still fight.

The future is already won, and the more hostile the culture, the easier it is to communicate the difference of Christianity.

In short, the enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.

In every other religion the indicative flows from the imperative. Which means, ‘because I do, therefore I am... because I do this, therefore I’m a child of God.’ But only in Christianity does the imperative flow from the indicative. ‘Because I am in Christ all these things, therefore I obey.’ Exactly the opposite.

It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about "compatibility" and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for.

The happy ending of the Resurrection is so enormous that it swallows up even the sorrow of the Cross.

Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power.

I think these younger Christians are the vanguard of some major new religious, social, and political arrangements that could make the older form of culture wars obsolete. After they wrestle with doubts and objections to Christianity many come out on the other side with an orthodox faith that doesn't fit the current categories of liberal Democrat or conservative Republican.

Most apologetic books are really written for Christians, even the ones that purport to be written for non-believers.

God has become human. The absolute has become particular. The ideal has become real. The divine has taken up a human nature.

Your heart is smothering under your small ambitions.

Freedom is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.